I always thought of anyone that works on a game as a game developer. I dont thing that title isnintrinsicly linked to coders. Coders dont decide the genre or the story, or the direction or gameplay styles etc. They only write the code that makes it all work.

I guess apply the logic somewhere else. If i say i design shoes, but all i do is pick the fabric to be used on shoes, someone else designs the shape, another person works on the comfort and another does drawings and sketches etc. Am i not a shoe designer?

I think when a term becomes an industry like game development or footwear design or film maker or anything, it is fair to say you are that thing despite being a single cog in the machine.

What gives the artist less value than the coder? I cant play the code. Need a character on screen and a world for them to move around in. I need story, i need objectives, i need dialogue and music and sfx etc.

Game dev is so much more than just programming, there's also:

1. Music/Audio engineer.
2. Art (character, environmental, UI)
3. Game design/level design
4. Writer/Storybuilder/lore writer

Each of them are just as important as actually coding a game. You can make a super optimized game, but without the rest, there would be no direction and no flavor to the game.

Music and art are the first things you'd be exposed to, just by watching a trailer. It's usually what hooks people in and gets someone to try a game. Think about games like Ori, Tunic, etc. if you heard of those games, you most likely were first exposed to their art or music. These things set the tone for a game. A serious scene would be ruined if the music didn't fit, and likewise, you wouldn't want to hear serene piano music for a goofy game like TF2, who loves to use horns and trumpets for their goofy war game.

Game design is functionally separate from programming because programming does not rquate to being able to create good level design. Think about zelda games. Each region had to be planned out to provide a unique experience and avoid repeition. Lots of platformers do the same. Even multiplayer games need level design in the form of maps. Part of the fun of FPS games is being able to play different maps, like dust2 to nuke in CS.

Writing is an interesting part where some games might not need much, and some games need a lot of it. Games that rely on storytelling like the walking dead, abzu, etc. require a cohesive story, while others might just need a simple draft, like plants vs zombies or possibly none at all (think simple puzzle games like flow)

Obviously, people can work in multiple categories. I've done both art and programming for some college indie projects, and other game devs usually also have experience in multiple fields if they do indie.